"Denise Cameron" <elenaholman@opgaming.com> wrote:

(Comments and criticisms are welcome, and you can send them
to the list or to me, it doesn't matter either way.)

As always, please remember that the best way to get comments is to give
them out.

Anyway... spelling and grammar are mostly very good, with the exception
of one error that you make pretty consistently. Here's an example:

"Damn that Ranma, why do I let him get me riled up?" He asked, picking
up the pieces and putting them aside. 

In the above, "asked" is directly telling you that the line of dialog is
spoken. The line of dialog "Damn that..." is *what* he asked. So it
needs to be punctuated as part of the same sentence. "he" does not begin
a new sentence, and thus isn't capitalized.

"Damn that Ranma. Why do I let him get me riled up?" he asked, picking
up the pieces and putting them aside.

(I also corrected the run-on sentence in the quote, by the way.) Note
also that if you hadn't ended the dialog in a question, you'd use a
comma rather than a period, since the sentence continues:

"Damn that Ranma." he said... -- WRONG
"Damn that Ranma." He said... -- EVEN WRONGER
"Damn that Ranma," he said... -- RIGHT

Compare this with the case where the narration is a separate action, not
directly telling you that the dialog was spoken:

"Damn that Ranma. Why do I let him get me riled up?" He picked up the
pieces and put them aside.

"Damn that Ranma." He picked up the pieces and put them aside.

Look for this throughout both chapters.


Second comment is that your author notes, in my opinion, are way too
long. I'd much rather be shown your story than listen to you tell me
*about* your story. For example, you mention several times in the header
and pre-notes of both posted chapters that your fic is a continuation.
You really wouldn't need to say this at all; you could establish the
timing easily enough within the context of the story. Certainly if you
do say it you only need to do so once. Similarly, notes on the making of
the story, what you've changed, etc. can at least be moved to the back
where they won't keep anyone from getting to the story right away.

As for the story itself, it's too early to tell. The basic plot seems
like it's been done a number of times before. You did have some pretty
nice character moments, but I found the forest of the overall story
somewhat less interesting than the individual trees.

I think you need to establish a reason for Nabiki's involvement in all
of this. She's never gone out of her way to be helpful to Akane (or
anyone else) in the manga. If she's doing so here, we need to see a
reason for it. For that matter, why are Ranma and Akane taking action to
get rid of their rivals? Especially why bother with Gosunkugi, who's
never been much of a factor anyhow? We don't necessarily need to know
the answers to these questions right away, but it needs to be clear in
your story that *you* know, and that you're at some point going to give
us enough explanation to make it convincing.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html

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